Focus On Kid Safety

MORE SCARES THAN HALLOWEEN

On Halloween I will dress in costume, spend the evening handing out candy and experience the pure joy of children engaging in one of their favorite holiday customs: dressing up as their favorite character and going from door-to doorsinging out that age-old phrase, “Trick or Treat.”

Since our daughter and her family moved to Washington Avenue in Fayetteville the excitement of Halloween for our family has been notched up because that street is in one of Fayetteville’s oldest residential neighborhoods and is always fi lled with children on Halloween.

The trees along the street and the architectural complexity of the historic homes add to the overall feeling that this special holiday and this special street are almost too perfect to exist in this world.

Parents walk along with children, or pull them in wagons, and everyone is friendly and visiting with one another, just like you think a neighborhood is supposed to be. The world seems safe, or at least this neighborhood does, in spite of the ghouls, goblins and other characters who the children have chosen to impersonate for the night.

And yet everything is not safe for all of these children.

All of our neighborhoods are home to children whose parents either do not, or cannot, keep them safe.

All of our neighborhoods house families who struggle with domestic violence, when one adult in the family exerts oppressive power over the other to the point of abuse. Domestic violence is not limited to families who are struggling financially, who are under educated or who fi t any specifi c demographic criteria.

Throughout our communities there also are families who abuse or neglect children, either out of ignorance, inability to do otherwise or dysfunctional family systems. And then there are the families whose financial resources are not enough to maintain food security, meaning there are days, or possibly weeks, when the money has run out and the cupboard is bare.

I give thanks to God that within my family the children are safe, and I do so knowing it is truly a blessing just to be safe. While Halloween is a relatively safe holiday in Northwest Arkansas, and more safe on some streets than on others, it is a holiday historically associated with a rather scary concept: the evening preceding “All Saints Day” when, by fable, the “lessthan-saintly” came out of graves and roamed the earth.

Halloween is a holiday that is celebrated in a fun and counterintuitive way, when children put on costumes, pretending to be someone who they are not, and trust those on whose doors they knock will give them candy. Even as parents stand behind their smaller children to ensure their safety, ordinarily knocking on a stranger’s door is something that these sameparents would strongly discourage.

In 2012 we acknowledge this world is not as safe a place for children as anyone would hope. Too often we hear the all-too-familiar news story of a child being abducted from a neighborhood everyone thought was safe. Morgan Nick, who lived just down the highway in Alma, disappeared from a baseball fi eld where children laugh and play and parents visit in the stands never believing their child could possibly be in danger.

As we approach Halloween let us not just purchase candy for the children, carve our pumpkins, decorate our homes and appreciate the pure pleasure of children’s joy. Our commitment for the children of our community should go beyond our love of our own children and this one evening. Washington Avenue, and all of our streets, should not just be a safe place for our children onHalloween, but should be a safe place for children every day of the year.

There is so much we can do. Jesus Christ welcomed the little children to come to him, exhibiting God’s commitment through the example of Jesus Christ to the children of the world. We can address the hunger needs of all children through giving of our resources and by working together to support public transportation and programs that feed children.

This commitment must go beyond our personal neighborhoods, the churches we belong to, or the community we live in. Jesus told his followers they were to love their neighbor as themselves, and when asked who that neighbor might be, the answer surprised most. Our neighbor doesn’t necessarily live next door. The children of Haiti, Uganda, and all of the places around the world are our neighbors.

We must educate ourselves about issues such as domestic violence, child abuse and food insecurity. We must be willing to stand up and say these injustices that affect our children are wrong. We must be willing to be a part of solutions rather than wringing our hands and convincing ourselves there is nothing we can do.

I am looking forward to Halloween night, when it seems the evil of this world is diminished through a holiday celebrating children in a backdrop of things that are scary. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could transform the evil that walks this world everyday and that threatens the children of this world, in the same way that Halloween has transformed an evening of fear when the evil of the world rose up in anticipation of the celebration of the Saints? I believe we can if we all commit to making this world a safe place for all of God’s children.

THE REV. LESLIE BELDEN IS A MINISTER OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (U.S.A.)

Religion, Pages 10 on 10/27/2012

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